2022 Pharma 50: The 50 largest pharmaceutical companies

By Brian Buntz | June 22, 2022

Pharma 50 2021 was a bright year for many pharmaceutical firms, especially those able to find widespread support for COVID-19 vaccines and therapies.

But it would be wrong to take a myopic view of the pandemic as a chief growth driver for leading drug developers. The most significant impact of the pandemic may be how it changed R&D rather than how it drove sales in 2021.

Three companies rounding out the top five — including the Chinese conglomerate Sinopharm, AbbVie and Novartis — didn’t have material COVID-19-related sales in 2021. The same holds for the bulk of companies in this year’s Pharma 50 report, which ranks the industry’s leading companies by overall revenue.

Get the full story from our sister site, Drug Discovery & Development.

About The Author

Brian Buntz

The pharma and biotech editor of WTWH Media, Brian is a veteran journalist with more than 15 years of experience covering an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, drug discovery and development and medical devices. Before coming to WTWH, he served as content director focused on connected devices at Informa. In addition, Brian covered the medical device sector for 10 years at UBM. At Qmed, he overhauled the brand’s news coverage and helped to grow the site’s traffic volume dramatically. He had previously held managing editor roles on two of the company’s medical device technology publications. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email at bbuntz@wtwhmedia.com.